No lawyer is willing to represent Pakistan govt in judge’s case

LAHORE: The government is unable to find a lawyer of any standing to represent it before the supreme judicial council in the reference against the chief justice.

Bar councils and bar associations throughout the country are quick to suspend the memberships of lawyers perceived to be associated with the government in this crisis. All this, in support of a chief justice who was no one’s favourite, in fact, against whom lawyers had grievances regarding his behaviour in court.

Furious, and unanimous in their condemnation of the attempt to sack the chief justice, lawyers see this as a reprehensible step by a general-sitting-as-president to rob the judiciary of what is left of its independence.

Enough is enough, they say and while they may not have had any love for the person of the chief justice, they have resolved to stand by him to save the institution from this ugly attack. On this there is complete clarity and unanimity amongst lawyers not seen for a long, long time on any issue.

It is impossible to believe that this mess the government is in is the result of incompetent and poor advice alone. So systematically has the government blundered at every step that it seems that things have been brought to this head by design by someone from within.

References can be filed against a supreme court judge, including the chief justice. But it is the modus operandi with which the government has proceeded in this case that is ridiculous beyond belief.

The manner in which the chief justice was “summoned” by the president and kept waiting for hours at his camp office; the haste with which Justice Javed Iqbal was sworn in as acting chief justice without waiting for Rana Bhagwandas, the senior most judge, to return from his leave; the detention and holding incommunicado the “suspended” chief justice; his manhandling by the police; the baton charge and pelting of lawyers taking out a procession in Lahore; preventing lawyers from entering Islamabad to protest outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday; taking independent TV channels off air to stop them from reporting. All this can not merely be the result of incompetent advice because no one can be that consistently and perpetually incompetent.

Someone has worked hard at ensuring that the government sinks deeper and deeper into this mess.

In this time of utter confusion and turmoil only one thing is clear: Whoever has brought this about is the only clever and efficient mind within the establishment because it has succeeded in accomplishing its agenda remarkably well.

Bilal Hasan Minto is a Lahore-based lawyer